Snow Goose Panorama

I had to put together a submission to a client the other day on New Mexico, and I realized I had some images I had not full processed. More specifically, I had some images that I had shot in parts, so they could be pieced together into a larger panoramic image.

I love doing these kinds of images, often at extremely wide and narrow dimensions.

There are plenty of tutorials on the inter-web for how to do these, and someday I will give my detailed step-by-step instructions. But for now, I will give some simple shooting tips:

The longer the lens you use, the easier the images fit together.

Try to rotate the camera around the “nodal point” (center point between front of lens and the sensor) as you shoot. Using a tripod and a 70-200mm lens with lens collar makes this easy.

Do NOT crop too tight in the camera.

Shoot on manual, using the same color temperature (either in camera or when processing for output to the panorama software).

Overlap images by at least a third. I usually overlap by ½, just to be safe.

Panorama of snow geese in pond in early morning light, Bosque del Apache, National Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico, USA. Canon 1Dx. 200mm. ISO 2000. f/[email protected]/60 second. 11 images stitched together into one huge 100 megapixel image. What about all the moving birds? Be quick when you shoot and let the software sort it out.